Zack Arnold

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Kicking Cancer’s A*s, with Jane Arnold (i.e. my Mom)

About Episode

14 months ago Jane Arnold (my mom) was diagnosed with Stage 3 Mantle Cell Lymphoma, an incurable form of blood cancer. She was literally on her deathbed and I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to fly home to say my good-byes. But if you knew her, you’d know she doesn’t give up easy (a trait I have clearly inherited). And for the last year she has completely transformed her lifestyle and is more healthy and vibrant than I’ve ever seen her. EVER.

In this episode we discuss the practical tips and small changes she has implemented to transform her life (hint: none of them are terribly difficult). A year ago she was 65 pounds heavier eating nothing but junk and never being active. Listen in to hear how she lost 65 pounds and is now the most energetic she has ever been.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with the creator of the creator of Fitness and Post. If you haven’t kind of put those two things together yet, I’m joined today by my mom, Jane Arnold. So, mom, thank you for being on the show today.

Jane Arnold: A pleasure.

Zack Arnold: So, the reason that I have you on the show today is not because you’re my mom and I want you to talk about how great I am and how great my childhood was, and how great of a mother you are, and all those other things. This actually has very little to do with our personal connection. The reason that you’re here is because you are now one of the ambassadors of Fitness and Post, and you’ve been through what I would consider a pretty trying and arduous ordeal with your health over the last year. And for my listeners that have been with me for a long time. The new ones, new listeners probably won’t know this, but the older listeners will know that a little over a year ago you were diagnosed with terminal blood cancer. So what I want to do today is just kind of talk a little bit about your journey over the last year, kind of what it is that we think got you there, and kind of some of the older habits that you adopted, and just the transformation that you’ve gone through, because you’ve essentially astounded and amazed every single doctor that you’ve spoken to, every single person that knew you before and after. You’ve kind of made this entire life transformation, and I just kind of want to talk about that because there really, literally, you couldn’t have been any closer to death than you were. I mean, I don’t think there’s any possibility of it. And now you are healthier and thriving more than I’ve probably ever seen you in my entire life. So the idea is today we’re just going to talk about that and hopefully inspire a few people to to make some of these changes. So where I want to start today is at the worst part of the story. So let’s talk about kind of where you were a little bit over a year ago, right before everything started, and then talk through what happened then.

Jane Arnold: Okay, well, I guess a little over a year ago, I was 60-five pounds heavier, and I didn’t feel very well, as you might imagine. We were both your dad and I were both eating junk most of the time. He works like you do most of the time with his business, and we were living and are still living in a fairly small apartment with our home four hours north of here. And it just wasn’t the best time. I had made appointments with my doctor to go in and see what was wrong, and unfortunately, he had to cancel one because he was ill, and I decided that I needed to go into the hospital and not caring too much for emergency rooms. I actually called an ambulance, and they came and picked me up on I think a Wednesday afternoon. And the last thing I remember for about two weeks or three weeks was laying in the emergency room, thinking that they were taking a darn good long time to come and see what was wrong with me. For some reason, I think because it’s a real blessing, the next three weeks are just gone out of my mind. So you would know you were there, your sister was there, your brother was there, and of course your dad. I was there. You would know a lot more about the particulars of what happened during that time, but I pretty much woke up looking at the beautiful face of one of your cousins, one of my nieces who had come to visit me, and I looked at her and said, “Hana, what are you doing here? And she looked back at me and she said, “Well, Jane, what are you doing here? And quite honestly, I couldn’t answer the question until your dad and I talked, what I had gotten to at that point was pretty much a lifetime. I’m I was 70 then. I’m 71 now. A lifetime of lack of exercise, lack of activity, except for chasing after little kids when you guys were little. Bad diet, bad choices as far as food and cooking and all of that sort of thing, so I think it kind of all just came together in the wrong way. There is also a history in my family. My father died of Hodgkin’s disease, which is not what I have. I have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but both are blood cancers, and there is some discussion and some research about this. Possibly, I don’t want to scare you, but possibly running in families, although they are two very different, very different diseases or two different illnesses. So when I woke up, I discovered that this was my situation. And quite honestly, your use of the word terminal is something I just have refused to accept. I think that’s part of why I’m still here today. I have to be honest with you. I’ve done very little research into lymphoma, or I have a particular kind of lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma, which makes up about 6% of lymphomas. I do know that my doctor told me that, but I have not gotten involved with any support groups, I don’t buy any books. I don’t do any research on the internet unless I have a specific question. Nor do I ask my doctor about specific things. I did hear he was setting up. By the way, one of the secrets is having a marvelous doctor that I like very much and trust. And he was setting up a rigorous chemotherapy regime for me, and I had two sessions of chemotherapy while I was in the hospital, and I was in the hospital for about eight weeks, and both of them made me very sick. And I just laid there thinking, what in the world reason would anybody have to go through this and be sick all the time, and a young doctor walked past the end of my bed one day and said to my doctor, “You know, there there’s this new pill that’s been approved by the FDA for mantle cell lymphoma. And he said it very quietly, like perhaps I wasn’t supposed to have heard that, but I did, and I immediately jumped on it and said to my doctor, well, what are we talking about here? And it turned out that the young doctor was right. That’s exactly what was available. It’s medication called Imbruvica.

Jane Arnold: It is was approved by the FDA after rigorous testing for exactly this type of lymphoma. And I made the decision, along with your dad, that quality of life at the age of 71, was extremely important to me. If it had been 30 years ago when my children were little, I would have probably taken a completely different course. But my doctor agreed that this was all right with him. He thought it was a good. We had a good shot at doing very well, and I’m very happy to say that at least as of two months ago, I think March, maybe three months ago, at the last time I was scanned, I was officially told that this is in remission. So of course you keep your fingers crossed for every scan and every day and every month. But I have been extremely fortunate, fortunate in my doctor, fortunate in my family, I should put those in the opposite order, and I think fortunate in the type of choices that I’ve made, and your dad and I have made as far as diet. We have followed the fitness and post regime. I mean, it’s just been a wonderful blessing, and we have married that with with the goals and the planning and the discussions that come from your movie go far. Obviously, the goal here was to live as long and healthy and active a life as possible, recognizing the obstacles. And there are there certainly are some having a focus on this. But I thought a healthy focus for me, a healthy focus anyway, not to be critical of anyone else. Then to act on that, take the pills, see the doctor, do what he says, watch the diet. I’m trying to walk four or 5000 steps a day, which I know doesn’t sound like very much to your fitness and post listeners, but for me is probably about 4500 more steps than I was walking any other day since I haven’t had small children, and then go back and review, which in fact we do do on a regular basis, and we do it with the doctor as well as with family members and between the two of us, my husband and I. So long story.

Zack Arnold: Well, it’s funny because I want to make it a much longer story and kind of go into details, and obviously, I think the the useful part of this is going to be what have you done in the last year. But I actually want to go backwards first because we’re we started at the the worst part where you got the diagnosis. I frankly don’t remember a lot of those two or three weeks either because I blocked most of it out. But the interesting part about all of this is the timing of it, in that I had gotten the phone call from I don’t even remember if it was from my dad or if it was from Kate and my sister. I don’t even remember who it was, but basically saying you need to fly out to Wisconsin immediately. This is it. And like, what are you talking about? Nobody knew anything was going on, but this literally happened the week that I gave my presentation and introduced the Fitness and post blog and website for the first time, so I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason. And I had spent-I mean, I’ve spent probably the last decade trying to figure out how do I stay healthy in this industry, which is kind of where this program came from. But then all of a sudden, I realized that I had been learning all of these things, and I now had something very acute and very pressing in an emergency situation where I had to dig in and I had to learn even more about this stuff. And like you said, oh, I didn’t haven’t read any books or gone on any websites. Well, that’s all I did for a week is I sat in the emergency room waiting room. I lived there with everybody else and just started reading and reading and reading and learning about what was going on, trying to have educated conversations with the doctor because I knew nothing about cancer. It’s something that’s never really hit our immediate family. I know that your your sister had breast cancer. I think it was almost a decade ago, but that wasn’t something that I was involved with on a daily basis. So I didn’t feel like I had a lot of responsibility to do in depth research or anything else other than just kind of being supportive. But I found that I was starting to to use a lot of these tools and websites and resources, and it really became very real for me. And then I started to think about well, what was it that got you to the point that you were? So that’s where I want to go now. Is rather than talking about what you’ve done for the last year to make all these transformations, I really want to talk about the choices that were made. Over the course of mostly a whole lifetime, but at least the last 20-five to 30 years that I can corroborate because I’ve been a part of it. Because obviously I didn’t know you before I was born, but there are a lot of just things that I saw growing up, and a lot of behaviors and a lot of choices that were made, and that’s kind of what I want to talk about because that’s really where this program has come from. Is not so much oh I want to sell Shakeology or I want to lose 15 pounds and I want to look good on the beach. It’s how do I make these long term lifestyle changes to make sure that when I hit 7075, or 80, I’m still alive and vibrant and have energy and can play with my grandkids. So where I want to start is diet and food. So just kind of talk to me about a lot of the dietary choices that you were making, kind of just over the course of the last couple of decades and what your diet looked like, and that’s something that I can talk about as well as far as the experiences that I’ve had and what I saw growing up. But I want to hear it from you first, and then I can kind of expand on it.

Jane Arnold: Okay, well, I think that one of the things that I would, the framework I would kind of put around this is the way quote unquote the way things were done as I became a mother and a young wife and then an older wife and then a career woman and I guess all mixed in with the advertising and the kinds of things that you’ve talked about in fitness and posts. For example, when I was a kid, a new marshmallow product came on on the market from Kraft, and then Velveeta came, and then there were other things. And my mother just loved all that stuff. We probably ate Velveeta for five years or 100 it seems like, or this marshmallow product. She made everything but plates and forks and knives out of that marshmallow stuff. So this goes way back in my life, and it’s all a part of I think kind of the post World War II explosion of advertising, the whole Mad Men syndrome. This is how you do things: the women’s magazines with all the ads, television with all the ads. This was the way you lived, and so this was the way you ate. Convenience food. Who had to bake a cake? You just buy a box, or who had to make frosting? You just buy a little container. Ice cream, everything heavily sugar, heavily greasy, and then process, process, process, process. So this was the whole environment where my generation and the next generation, which is your generation, grew up-the whole emphasis on healthy living, on organic products, the knowledge of pesticides, and all of those things-no talking about just like smoking. If you stop and think about the whole evolution of smoking, and then what looks like the diminution or the the end of smoking that was the same arc that all of everybody’s bad diets followed. Probably your dad escaped this the most because he grew up on a farm and they they had ready food. But for the rest of us, that wasn’t it. So the diet choices were very simple: boxed cereal, pretend syrup for pancakes, mixes for everything. Mixes were absolutely required in Wisconsin. Of course, there was a whole oleo margarine thing, and when margarine came in, oh my goodness, that was just wonderful. Crisco, we had huge things of Crisco when I was growing up, and these are the habits that a person takes with them most of the time. You haven’t, or your sister or brother haven’t. Most of the time in my generation, you just moved along with what your mother had done. For instance, my mother made the best pie crust in the world, but made it with lard. I mean, that’s enough to give a person a heart attack. Well, literally, I suppose now, but that’s just the way it was. So that was those were the dietary choices, the food choices that I made when my children were young and when you guys were growing up. And then I went out to work, which of course immediately collapsed the amount of time was available. So telephone became the best chef in our house to order pizza and things like that. Anything that was delivered was good enough for me. Again, food from delicatessens, processed food, packaged food-all of it bad, bad, bad. Heavily sugared. Just the ingredients were amazing. It’s interesting now when I go at the grocery store. I realized just the other day, thinking about talking to you, that it’s very easy. A guy go just exactly the way it’s described in the articles on the outside aisles. I start with the fruit and the vegetables, and sometimes bread, and go right along. I do use an organic milk product down to water and down to the end for any kind of you know cleaning source of things that I might buy, but I never get into those middle aisles anymore with all the processed food. And if I’m looking for something that might be in one of those aisles, I’m kind of horrified by what I see. And I realize why it takes me such a little time now to go to the grocery stores.

Jane Arnold: I’m not trolling those aisles one after another for all the packages. I can throw in the basket, so I’m sure that you’ve kidded me in the past about using country crock margarine. Well, that was a big deal when you were growing up. We now only use butter and only unsalted butter. We both like it better, and your dad uses it in his special coffee that he uses that you recommended. So, is that about what you were looking for? Yeah,

Zack Arnold: That’s perfect. You actually went even further and deeper than I was hoping because you brought up the larger issue of where you really were one of the first generations to grow up with all of the food marketing and the packaged foods and the fake foods. And let’s say that you had actually logged all of the food that you ate over the course of 30 or 40 years. I’d venture to guess that less than 5% of it was actual real whole food that was grown from the ground or came from a natural animal. So you were basically living off of processed chemicals from boxes for decades.

Jane Arnold: Yes, in fact, when you talk about that today, there’s the today is the day there’s a farmers market a little bit down the road from where we’re living now, and all of the years that I was growing up, I never remember having anything like a farmer’s market. And I discovered one when your brother and sister were little, and I used to go over there once a week and buy things, and lots of people were there, but most of the people were looking. I always thought that was kind of amusing, and I remember one day stopping to talk to a lady. We were looking at basket after basket of fresh green beans or green peas, and I looked at her and I said, “Well, what do you do with these? Because I had no experience cooking anything from fresh like that. I knew how to open a can of peas or green beans and put them in a pan, maybe with a little water, and load them up with butter and salt and pepper and serve them. But looking at a basket full of green beans or green peas, it was just like looking at a looking at a board and saying, “All right, fly to Mars on this thing. I had no idea, and the funny thing was she was about my age and she started to laugh and she looked at me and she said I don’t have a clue which is why I never buy any of this stuff I just like looking at yeah and

Zack Arnold: I think that’s that’s a really great point is that when you think about the education that you had about food and diet growing up that education wasn’t coming from health experts kind of the way that it does now and still the people that are the health experts and the doctors and the dieticians, the nutritionists-they’re still in the minority. Their voice is still being overpowered by all of the corporations and the food marketers. But I don’t see any reason why, according to the information that you were given for those 30 or 40 years, that you would have thought you were doing anything wrong. Because if if you look at the packaging, the education that you were getting about what was good for you was coming from the people making the products. So you were looking at it, saying that it was it was light, or it was fat free, or it was healthy, or it was natural, whatever it was that the package may have said. And that even

Jane Arnold: Came later, Zack. That came long time after you know the whole idea of fat-free, which is, I guess, some kind of a joke, or it was healthy or natural. That kind of thing came a long time after even your brother and sister were grown up. That was relatively new fad. That was not there in the early married years or even the middle years. That was all. You know, I think of myself as a key holding member of the Mad Men generation. We fell, and our parents fell, hook, line, and sinker for the whole post World War II boon and all these manufactured foods and pretend stuff. And you know, we just bought it up and bought it up. You know, we’re probably responsible for the great economy at that time, but it’s poisoned us and made us sick. And look, you know, look at what we’ve got our hands on now: the heart disease, the diabetes, cancer, all of these things, and people a little bit younger than I am and about my age. And that’s the lack of light at the end of that particular tunnels.

Zack Arnold: Well, and it’s funny you brought up the the country croc because, as an avid listener of my show, because you’re my mom, but also now a program member, you know that I’ve made you know a few jokes growing about how I grew up with Fruit Loops and Fruit Roll-ups and Country Croc, and I’ve always had the very clear disclaimer that I don’t blame you for any of it because of all the information that you got. But when people will meet me for the first time if they’re at a if I’m on a panel or if at an event or even if I’m just at a new job, they’ll come up to me and they just automatically assume that I’m a health nut and I’m sitting there having my raw cashews as a snack and having my salads for lunch and they just picture that that’s just the way that I am. But it could not be further from the truth because I grew up on all the same processed foods and boxed foods, and I mean, I remember having honey made graham crackers and country crock for dinner. You know, like that’s what happened when you had two parents that worked all the time and weren’t there to to make you a nice, fresh, wholesome dinner. You would have pizza and you would have microwave popcorn. I don’t. Even think I knew that our stove worked growing up. I just thought everything was made in the microwave, so I had horrible habits imprinted in me as well. The only thing that’s different between your story and mine is that I grew up having all that information until this thing called the internet came out, and then all of a sudden I had the ability to start educating myself, which is where the transformation came. Was that I won’t go into too much detail because this information is in previous podcasts and on the website and in the show notes I’ll put a link to kind of my original story. But when I was 25 all that hit me like a ton of bricks, and I realized how unhealthy I was and how at 25 I could barely function. How was I going to make it the next 50 or 60 years? But this transformation happened because I had the resources and the ability to do my own research, whereas you didn’t have the ability to do any of that, and the only information fed you was through advertising and through the news, and that’s that’s all that you had. So there’s no reason for you to think otherwise. But the next thing that I want to talk about before we move forward is the activity, because that’s a huge component of all of this is activity and wellness, and I grew up in a house where I don’t think I can recall one single instance in the 18 years that I lived with my parents that I ever saw either of you exercise once ever. So I did not grow up in a house where three times a week I remember seeing my dad on a treadmill or saying I’m going out for a hike today, or hey, do you want to go swimming together? I don’t ever remember either of you exercising ever.

Jane Arnold: I did take, in fact, after you were born to get back in shape. You wouldn’t remember this jazzercise or aerobic aerobic dance had just gotten to be a thing where we lived, and I joined the YWCA, and I did take aerobic dance classes and an exercise class, and even used the machines. And I just absolutely loved that. And did it for a couple of years, and got got in shape. I did it just because I enjoyed it. I thought about the health part of it, but primarily it was for cosmetic and good, you know, looking good purposes. But when I went to work full time with a 72-mile round trip every day and two teenagers or three teenagers actually and a two-year-old, time just kind of disappears and there’s just no more time for that really. That’s that’s part of the problem. We lived a distance away from where I worked, and like I said, I had had a little boy named Zack. I had to pick up by 6o’clock every night from daycare because I was always afraid I was going to find you sitting on the curb by yourself crying, and it was very very challenging. And some things just kind of fall down to the very very bottom of the list. So you’re right. You wouldn’t like I said you would not have remembered that part of it, but basically, by the time you were old enough to remember things, I was hot and heavy into the career world. And exercise again, like the cooking, was not a part of my life. Was not a part of my parents’ lives or aunts or uncles.

Zack Arnold: Well, and and I wasn’t. I I didn’t want that to come off as oh, you know, I can’t believe you guys weren’t exercising. It was just-it was another one of those things that defined the time where this was that transition, where for the first time it was becoming more acceptable for both parents in the house to be working. And again, people look at me and say, “Oh, while you’re in such great shape and you’re active and you know you’re doing Spartan races, and they just assume, “Well, I just grew up living in this active household, and it could not be further from the truth. Where what was imprinted on my brain was work, work, work, work, work all the time, and of course that that imprint stuck to it because I’m a self-proclaimed workaholic, which is part of the reason I’ve had to learn all these strategies to balance that. But that was just kind of what was imprinted on me for years, and I really feel and correlation does not equal causation, and I’m not going to say this is definitively it, but I feel fairly confident in saying that the accumulation of all the choices that you had made, both from an activity standpoint, from a dietary standpoint, I would say that a lot of that, coupled with your genetics, is what got you to the point where you were a year ago.

Jane Arnold: Yes, I would. I agree 100% with that, and I can look at it from a historical point of view, as I was talking about, from a cultural point of view, every other point of view possible, and I have there is certainly a point of individual responsibility there, which I should have been more aware. But just a whole conglomeration of things. It’s amazing how important that whole environment and big environment, you know, cultural environment, small environment. My parents, like I said, I never once saw my aunts or uncles, lively Irish, intelligent, bright, funny people ever really do anything. They they used to be farmers. They used to be farmers in Ireland. Then they came to the United States. They went, you know, they went to college. They became professionals. They were teachers and dentists and lawyers, and they worked and they worked in offices and they sat down and they smoked. And I was a smoker as well. I was a smoker for 15 years, and I quit because your dad was allergic. To cigarette smoke, so I had to decide: was I going to stay with him or smoke? So I I quit smoking, which I’m happy for. But apparently, that has even historically played a role in diseases like lymphoma. So the whole cultural thing extremely important, and having the bravery and the intelligence, like you have had, to break out of that, because our culture is still big picture. There’s still lots of those inside aisles in the grocery store, and very busy with young mothers with their kids in their baskets picking out all this stuff.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the problem has not been solved. It’s not like all of a sudden everybody’s eating healthy and we figured it out. But what’s happening is the same transformation that happened in the tobacco industry, where it went from well, my doctor said to reduce stress, I need to become a smoker. Like that was the 50s, where doctors were literally prescribing smoking as stress relief, and

Jane Arnold: Literally smoking themselves.

Zack Arnold: Yes, exactly. And then all of a sudden, it became well, what do you mean smoking is bad for me? Then it was, wait a second, smoking is bad for me, and then all of a sudden, people started going after the tobacco industries. And even though cigarettes are still around, it is so taboo and looked upon as such a disgusting habit that people are almost terrified to even admit that they’re a smoker. And from what I’m seeing, just from the the outside point of view that I have, because I’m not in this industry whatsoever, is that the same thing is happening to food that was happening to tobacco, and I think that we’re just in that middle period of wait a second, you’re right, this is why this is happening, this is bad for me. But the food companies and corporations are still as powerful as the Philip Morses were 20 years ago. But I think all that’s going to change, and it’s starting to change and happen fast. So I think the transition is going to happen, and I think it’s because individuals are making the choices that you are, and that I am, and the people in this program are, and all these other people that have the podcast and are sharing the information. I think the internet is just revolutionizing the way that we’re getting this information out to each other, and eventually, I think we’re going to win this battle. But it’s probably going to take another decade for the masses to realize. Oh wait, buying all these boxed foods and packaged foods is not good for me or healthy the way that it says on the front of the box.

Jane Arnold: Yep, you’re absolutely. I hope that’s true. I certainly hope I’ve seen I’ve seen the changes in your sister and in your brother and other family members as well. But there’s still an awful lot of cake mix boxes sold. I get a beautiful magazine every every month from Kraft, of course, one of the prime companies that produce all of this stuff. Talk about macaroni and cheese, and all I look at the recipes, and it’s like a horror story. I mean, I think, oh my lord, people are actually still making this stuff, but you know it looks awful, and it tastes awfully good too. That’s

Zack Arnold: The problem.

Jane Arnold: Oh, you know, and they know that they have scientists

Zack Arnold: And laboratories that are finding the maximum ability to basically activate the pleasure centers in somebody’s brain, so they become addicted to these foods. So it’s not like this is by accident. They have labs that they spend millions of dollars on to make sure that they’re maximizing the benefit of these foods, so that you want to buy more. It’s a business; it’s not a public service. So that’s that’s really the information that I’m trying to help people understand: is that when it says it’s light or it’s fat-free, it’s not because they’re doing you a public service and trying to make you healthier. It’s because they know that you’re going to want to eat more of it, so then they therefore will make more money.

Jane Arnold: Yep, exactly. You’re exactly couldn’t be more correct.

Zack Arnold: But I want to step off my soapbox and kind of get back to the trajectory of kind of this timeline that we’re talking about. So now we’ve kind of gotten a picture of what your lifestyle looked like for the vast majority of your life, and then all of a sudden you hit a year ago, and basically what we found out, like I said, I’d gotten the phone call to say that you need to fly out to Wisconsin because this is most likely it. And just because I really didn’t know what was going on, I called my doctor and our our family doctor, Dr. Edison de Mello, and I’ve done a couple of podcasts with him as well because he’s literally saved my life and saved the lives of at least 10 other people that I know now. So I’ll put links to his story and kind of his approach to medicine in the show notes. I had him talk to the doctor, and he talked to me, and he literally had a quiver in his voice, and he’s like, “I’m really sorry, but the prognosis is really bad, and you need to fly out as soon as possible because this this is bad, and you need to be there. So, as far as everybody was concerned, this was it. Like there was no coming back. The prognosis was just so bad, and the numbers were so bad. And I don’t remember any of the the details, but the big picture was that this was it, and there was no coming back from this. And when I arrived, it certainly looked that way, and you were in absolutely horrible shape. And what we found out was that this wasn’t something that you all of a sudden had? You had actually had this for about five years, and you had been dealing with a lot of other minor health issues that we now know were symptoms that nobody really kind of put all the pieces together. But you had been dealing with this for five years, and it was part of the reason that you had gained so much weight. I don’t think any. Wants to go into any of the the real details of that week or those two weeks, but basically you went through this period of well, I’m not going to do any chemotherapy, and I’m not doing any of this, and I don’t want to eat, and I’m on a hunger strike, and this is it. I’m just done. I want everybody to leave me alone, and I’m done. And you know, we took care of all of the final legal preparations and everything, assuming that was it, and then I flew home because I had to start a new job, and I was like, “All right, well, so that happened, right? And then all of a sudden, I got this call from Kate from my sister saying, “Mom woke up and she wants to fight. And from that point on, you have been a completely different person. And I don’t even know if you remember that part of the the conversation because I think it may have actually happened before you kind of came back and your memory came back, but all of a sudden you turned back on and that that fighting response and you came back on because that’s always been the thing about you is that everybody knows that you just don’t mess with Jane Arnold, you just don’t mess with her because she will tear she will tear you to pieces if if you take her on, and I think I’ve I found a modest version of that to to make my own version of me. I’ve toned it down a little bit, but I definitely still have that in me myself. But all of a sudden, you just turned on that switch and said, “Nope, that’s it. I don’t accept any of this, and I’m going to move forward. And all of a sudden, you just kind of wholesale completely changed your entire life. So let’s talk about specifically what some of those changes were that you’ve implemented that have made such a difference.

Zack Arnold: Because you’re now younger and thinner and more vibrant than I have any memory of you over my entire life. And you have blood cancer. And everybody said that you maybe had a year, two years, and it was going to be a pretty miserable couple of years, and you just refused to listen to any of that. And I firmly believe that it’s a combination of your mental state and the daily changes that you made that have gotten you where you are now.

Jane Arnold: Well, thank you, thank you very much. I there’s part of that that I had not heard before, so that was interesting to me. But I certainly believe what you said. I don’t remember too much being antagonistic, although I’ve heard a great deal about that. I guess the the first thing that I think back on it, I did decide that I was going to fight, and I didn’t do it. I should probably not say this, but I didn’t do it for anybody but for me. I’m very selfish. I have had a wonderful relationship with my oldest granddaughter, and I want the same thing with your two kids, which means I have to be around to have that relationship. So that was selfish. I want to grow old with your father, older than we are with your father, and there were just a lot of things that I wanted, and I thought, well, damn it! If I can say that in a podcast, this is just ridiculous. How did I get into this mess? I’m just going to have to dig myself out of here, which is similar, I guess. Someone with my personality probably ends up in these situations more often than not. The first thing that really, really got to me, and quite honestly, just infuriated me, pissed me off would be the colloquial term for it. Was that I couldn’t walk, laying in bed for so long. I don’t know if nobody decided it was important to keep me in shape that way, or I refused. Which I guess. Oh yes, I will very clearly say the

Zack Arnold: Reason that you weren’t getting up and walking around was that you adamantly refused to do any activity whatsoever. So

Jane Arnold: Okay, I

Zack Arnold: Know you don’t remember any of it, but yes, there’s a very clear reason, and it was just because you were literally out of your mind, which is not your fault, because you were not in control of your decisions. But we tried desperately to get you moving, and you just adamantly refused.

Jane Arnold: Okay, well, I could not even have imagined before this how inconvenient and disabling and infantilizing it is not to be able to get yourself out of bed and walk to the bathroom or go where you wanted. They wouldn’t let me out of the hospital, which just infuriated me even more. It was probably all good tactics because it just I just finally thought, well, this is ridiculous. And then they started sending physical therapists who were bullies in the hospital. They were wonderful when I got home. Different people. I didn’t like those people at all. And some nice lady came with rubber bands for me to use, you know, for my hands. And the whole thing just absolutely just it was an anger. Talk about fight or flight. I just was way too much for me. Just thinking about it is almost seems like it could be a comedy instead of maybe a tragedy. But I decided I was going home. I was going to learn to walk. I was going to do this. I was going to eat exactly what I wanted. I did eat. I ate egg salad, which I liked, and some soup. They actually made some good soup. Everything else tasted terrible. I discovered was because of the chemotherapy, and so I just didn’t want to eat anything I didn’t like. So finally, my behavior I think was so bad, and I made friends with one wonderful physical therapist who we really. Liked each other. She managed to get me sprung along with your dad, and I came home and they sent me two physical therapists from what’s called Home Healthcare United, which I would highly recommend. And the first thing I decided was, well, by golly, it just wasn’t going to happen by magic. I was still sitting here, sitting here, and unable to walk, and thought, well, I guess I better do what they tell me to do. So I did. We started out in a wheelchair, went to a walker, and then finally one day I thought, well, this is silly. I’m right here in my own house, so I started to walk. And by gosh, we have a wonderful video of your daughter Evelyn right after she started to walk, pushing a little toy that we had given her for Christmas, and her legs were all spread out for balance and everything. And I think for about two months, I walked just like Evelyn did when she started to walk. And I just always kidded myself about it. But by golly, I walked. And once I started to walk, there really has been no stopping me from an activity point of view. Like I said, I tried to get in 5,000 steps a day. It was winter time here, which is not conducive to being outside. So I decided I would walk at the local Target store, 7,500 steps around once around the outside aisle. I could do my shopping there, including food, not in the inside aisles, but the outside aisles. So I could kill several birds with one stone. I’d make about four or five trips, not at the beginning, but later on. Driving was extremely important to me. I had to learn to drive, be able to drive. Something I have always loved. I’m addicted to the L.A. freeways and miss them like crazy. And finally, I convinced your dad to let me drive his car around a driveway and discover no problem with driving. The minute that I told them I was able to drive, the physical therapists had to fire me, quote unquote, because I had to be homebound in order to have their service, which is silly, but I can understand it. But by then I was already walking like Evelyn, but at least walking, I could use a cane when I needed it, and I became absolutely in love with moving. I learned that when I got my steps in, I felt better mentally, I felt better physically, I looked better. It’s really been a complete psychological and physical transformation, and I just laugh at myself because of all the people who would have found walking really almost anywhere but 5000 steps a day, purposely going down the basement with the garbage and coming up and going down again for something else just to get my steps in.

Jane Arnold: That was not me, but I know now that when I’m starting to feel kind of yucky, get up, Jane. Get up. Get out. Do something. Which is why we’re hoping to be in California for the winter because I’m not going to be stuck in here another winter for the cold where I can’t be outside or can’t be out, you know, walking or doing whatever I want. Can’t get around because of snow and ice and so forth. So that has been a complete psychological and physical transformation, but more psychological than anything. I know you do the Spartan races. Your sister does the Spartan races and the tough mudders, and I just always found that delightful that you guys were so cool and did all this stuff and used to think they’re not related to me, but I understand much better now in my own little way, my own 70-one-year-old way, how that makes you feel and what a difference it makes in your life. So I mean, if anybody’s listening to this who is still sitting around, I would say just get up and do something. Just go for a walk, or climb the stairs, or do something, as you’re going to feel better.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that you’ve kind of been through your own Spartan race in a way. Like if if I if I had my choice of doing a Spartan ultra marathon or going through what you did, I’d probably choose the Spartan 10 times out of 10, so I wouldn’t sell yourself short, saying that it’s not your thing, because I think that you’ve conquered your own Spartan race. But what I really take out of all of this is that it was once you became aware of your lack of activity, and then you then had a tool to be able to track it. That’s really what changed the mindset, and that’s why I’m such a huge fan of getting a Fitbit. And in the show notes, I’ll put a link to the the Fitness Impulse program, where step two is developing awareness. But that, to me, is really the core of all of this: is that you can’t decide to make a change until you understand and are aware of the choices that you’re making now and the difference that changing those choices can make. And you just did something very simple and said, “Well, here’s the activity that I have now, or the lack of activity, and you decided I’m going to start tracking it, and now you have that specific goal in mind. And I think you’re probably like me and like most other people, where they experience this phenomenon where if you don’t track it or you don’t hit that goal, you all of a sudden feel like something is unfinished for the day, and you have to move towards that goal. Yep.

Jane Arnold: Yep. I just have to laugh. Honestly, I look at the the thing and how many steps I’ve taken. I think, oh, I’ve got to get you know do this. I better get out or better better get over to Target and do some walking around. Or we went to the mall every morning, early in the morning, with a walker. And ah, there were there were all these people in their fancy shoes walking around in a big hurry, and there was me and my cap because my hair had all fallen out, walking around, you know, hanging onto the walker for dear life. But by golly, I’d make it three times around, and I could go home and feel good all day. Yep,

Zack Arnold: And this is coming from somebody that, by accounts from medical experts, definitely would never drive again. Most likely would never walk again, and at best would walk with a tremendous amount of assistance. With a walker, would most likely be wheelchair bound. All of this after the point of them saying, “Well, she’s not even going to make it through the night. So, if there’s anybody that’s saying, “Well, I’m really busy and I’m at a really stressful job. There’s just no way that I can get 5000 steps in in a day, you’ve got no excuse. You got nothing. Like there, there’s no reason that you can’t find a way to be more active, and it’s a force multiplier that’s going to affect everything else. And that’s why I’m just such a huge advocate of becoming aware of your activity and tracking it, even if it’s not something you end up tracking for the rest of your life, just to get a sense of the difference that it can make when you can track. But going aside from activity, the one of the thing I wanted to talk about before we’re done is the entire dietary transformation that you’ve made. Because one part of this process that maybe during that period that you don’t remember very well is that for the first I don’t know maybe two weeks of this, two to three weeks, you just refused to ever eat anything ever again. That was it. You were just on a hunger strike and you were done. But then the first time your your appetite came back, you were saying, “Well, go out and get me Chinese food, or go out to this deli and get me this, or get me that. And I just kind of wanted to bang my head against the wall and say, “Oh my God, you’re in this position. We have a pretty good idea of what got you here, but now you’re just going down the same road. And I don’t know if you remember that point or not, but there was a very specific shift, and I don’t remember exactly when it happened because I wasn’t out in Wisconsin at the time. But all of a sudden, it was that you were done with all this stuff, and you started asking me about all the things that I was doing, and you started listening to the podcast. And now I don’t even recognize you when I sit down to eat or we go out to dinner. So, what are some of the wholesale dietary transformations that you’ve made?

Jane Arnold: Well, the first thing I’d like to say is I was so fortunate because I have in you an expert in all of these things. You know, where I can just reach out with the telephone and touch someone, and you, you know, you talk to me and you tell me, and all the information was on the internet. I did not have to search around or start the process that you did. I could just call my own son, which was wonderful. Sugar out as much as possible. I had. I just have to laugh at myself when I pick up you know whatever and look at the sugar, sugar, sugars. Those little sugar as possible, and you know very well that you were just used to be able to show me a picture of a coconut cake or a carrot cake, and man, I had to go out and buy one and could often eat, you know, about half the thing myself. So, sugar is just bad, and I just don’t I don’t eat it sometimes a little bit in a food or something, but not anything purposely purchased for sugar or put on fats. Only good fats. I’ve always liked olive oil best, and I never liked that other stuff. So we’ve been very, very good there. As far as meat of any kind is concerned, I absolutely love lamb, but we had very, very little of that. All of the beef or anything we buy now is grass-fed. You were the one who tipped us off as far as the difference between farmed salmon and wild salmon. In fact, your dad had bless his heart gone to Whole Foods, and I love lox, which is I know smoked and probably not good, but it did a great job getting my potassium or something up that needed to be put up. He went and brought, and what he brought home was farmed salmon. We just got rid of it. I think he ate it, and we we went back and started buying wild salmon. And now we can find it other places a little less inexpensively. So we eat very little or no sugar, healthy fats, real butter, as I mentioned, unsalted because we like the taste better, meats very very few, but you know the the best possible kind we can buy, like the grass fed and the very low fat meats too. I think we’ve learned to cook. I never really did cook, but your dad cooks and he’s learned to cook very differently. Any kind of thing we buy is a snack sort of thing. We really look very, very carefully. And I’ve removed gluten from my diet. I thought at one point that I had gluten sensitivity. I suspect it was mixed up with the lymphoma because I was having problems. With what I was eating, so we were looking into gluten-free stuff anyway, but we still are, and I don’t. I avoid most breads, any kind of you know bread in a package, out, out, out. I haven’t gotten to the point yet where I make my own bread, although I used to years and years ago. But we’re we’re just much more careful. Lots of eggs, corn products seem to be okay. So, in my little bit of studying and listening to you, listening to the podcast, reading the material, I just went through an article today that you posted on Facebook about 15 foods a nutritionist just wouldn’t eat. I was just amazed. We were doing very well on that list of 15 things and not eating them, so I think I think we’re getting there. It’s a process for sure, and it’s a process to find the best foods. But fortunately, we are in a city with a major university. We’re in Madison, Wisconsin, so a lot of the good foods are here. There is a Whole Foods here. There’s a food co-op, which is very nice. Huge farmers markets just all over town, so we’re very fortunate to have those choices. Well, and

Zack Arnold: I want to go backwards a couple of minutes and just put a giant asterisk on one thing you said, which is that I was an expert in coming from my mom. I of course very much appreciate that, but I make it very clear to anybody that’s listening, I am not an expert. I am just a guy that decided he wanted to learn more about this stuff for my own health, and then I decided I wanted to share it with other people. But the only resource that I have that everybody else has is Doctor Google. Outside of that, I have no training. I have no formal education. I just go out and I find the people that have the education, that have the resources, that are the actual experts in these fields, and I learn from them, and I share their information. So, for anybody that’s new and listening, saying, “Oh, he’s an expert. What are his credentials? I have zero credentials whatsoever. The one thing that I have education in, that I feel like I am an expert and I am a professional, is film editing. That’s it. Everything else is just passion driven, and I like learning and I like sharing that information, but I want to make sure that that is covered and put in big, huge, bold letters. But outside of that, like I said, the the timing of all of this was just kind of impeccable. That when all this information was needed by somebody, all of a sudden I kind of had it in front of me and had been doing the research, and it made it all feel very real. So the timing of it was apropos, and I’m glad that I was able to to have all that information. And it’s obviously it’s completely changed both you and my dad because he’s healthier and you know more vibrant and a different person than I ever remember. Because he was obese for at least two decades of my life, and when I look at pictures of him when he was around my age and younger. He was very svelte, very trim, and very good shape. And like you said, his upbringing was different in that he did grow up on a farm, and the vast majority of his diet was eating foods that they were growing. And you wouldn’t have called it an organic farm at the time, but that’s what it was. But the dad that I remember was a workaholic that was eating nothing but processed foods and stopping at McDonald’s and stopping at Burger King and he had all the same issues. So I was getting that imprint from both sides my entire life growing up, and then I’ve had to spend the last 10 years basically undoing all that. And and on doing that, it’s funny all the information I learned I was able to pass on to you, and now it’s been able to work for you. So I’m I’m glad that that that has kind of come full circle.

Jane Arnold: Oh, so am I. And I must say, as far as you’re being an expert, I think that the fact that you are not a credentialed expert, but kind of a a fellow that’s a bad phrase, a fellow traveler, but a person that’s on the same journey with the rest of us makes a big difference. I think there’s a comfort level there, not only because I’m your mother, but because you’re you’re a real person going through this, and there is an expertise or credibility there that doesn’t always follow when people just have letters behind their names because they’re not always some of them are wonderful, but like I said, my experience with a physical therapist certainly was you could be a PT, but there were very different types of PTs or anything else. We know that about doctors and nurses and lawyers and teachers and everybody else. So I think you need never apologize for not being a quote unquote expert, or I know you want to explain it, but to feel differently, I think there’s a great deal of credibility and commonality there that’s very, very important in what you do.

Zack Arnold: Well, I appreciate that. So my my goal is that a year from now I can have you back on the show and we can continue talking about all of the successes that you’ve had with your health. But in the meantime, we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to call it a show. And I want to thank my mother for taking the time to be on my podcast and talk about her health journey. And if there’s anybody out there that’s dealing with health struggles or has somebody in their family that has been diagnosed with cancer or diagnosed with a debilitating disease, I really think that. There are a lot of things that can be taken from the experience that you had because it was very real. It was very immediate. I mean, it was an emergency situation, and you found your way out of the precipice where you were right there, and now you’re the healthiest and most vibrant that you’ve ever been in your entire life. So I really feel like this is a tremendous roadmap for people to make positive change in their life. So I appreciate you being very candid and sharing your story.

Jane Arnold: Thank you, thank you very much. Love has a lot to do with it.

Zack Arnold

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Kicking Cancer’s A*s, with Jane Arnold (i.e. my Mom)

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